


Second Time Around

by AndThatWasEnough



Series: Marlboro 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Season/Series 14, Baby Jack Kline, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Childhood, Children's Literature, Children's TV, Cute Jack Kline, Domestic, Gen, Magic, Parenthood, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, Sick Dean Winchester, Terminal Illnesses, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 17:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18877885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndThatWasEnough/pseuds/AndThatWasEnough
Summary: Little baby boy, with big brown eyes with flecks of gold, wheat-colored hair, sweet chubby fingers and toes.  The first time Sam held the toddler in his arms, he pressed his lips gently to those same fingers as the child slept in his strong arms, holding him close to his chest, and then just stared down at him.  Dean thought he’d never seen his baby brother so gentle with anything in his life.  He never thought he’d see him holding a baby, either.  It was sorta weird, but in a good way.They rarely got to have the good kind of weird.





	Second Time Around

**Author's Note:**

> This is part three of the Marlboro 'verse, and unless you want to just squee over cute fluff, you're going to need parts one and two if you want to even remotely understand the plot. 
> 
> For the birthday boy.
> 
> Happy reading :)

Little baby boy, with big brown eyes with flecks of gold, wheat-colored hair, sweet chubby fingers and toes.  The first time Sam held the toddler in his arms, he pressed his lips gently to those same fingers as the child slept in his strong arms, holding him close to his chest, and then just stared down at him.  Dean thought he’d never seen his baby brother so gentle with anything in his life.  He never thought he’d see him holding a baby, either.  It was sorta weird, but in a good way.

They rarely got to have the good kind of weird.

xXx

_“It’s a de-aging spell, Jack.”_

_Jack’s brow drew inward as he looked between Billie and Rowena.  De-aging spell?  But he wasn’t even two years old yet!  How could they de-age him without completely turning back the clock on his existence?  Unless…. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” He asked._

_“No, you’re still going to exist, don’t worry,” Billie said dismissively with the wave of her hand.  She was treating this whole situation entirely too casually.  “You are slowly but surely headed down a dark path, Jack, no matter how well-intentioned you are.  I usually don’t intervene in these sort of things, but I’m not in the mood to deal with the Judeo-Christian God’s temper tantrum.”_

_Jack shook his head.  “You keep mentioning Him.  What does God have to do with any of this?”_

_“Well – everything,” Billie shrugged.  “Point is, you can’t see what I see, Jack.”_

_“What do you see?”_

_She scoffed.  “Why would I tell you?  God tells stories.  Every human soul is a story, each of them containing millions of possible paths and endings, and since I’m privy to all that, I am asking you, all of you, to trust me.  This is for the best.”_

_Everything was always for this so-called Best.  As Billie and Rowena went on to explain how Jack was going to be physically regressed to his true mental age, all Jack could think about was how much he and his family had been forced to sacrifice.  Autonomy, mostly, even if Jack didn’t know that was the word for it.  He could only hope, for his family’s sake, that this wasn’t another set-up._

xXx

The first time they saw him, Rowena had carefully glided out of the infirmary holding him in her arms as he slept, and all three men were surprised to note that she actually looked natural doing so, no matter what her history with her own son had been.  There was a note of fear in her eyes, but she approached Cas and gave him her easy, confident smile.

“I believe he belongs to you,” she whispered, and Cas – on some sort of base instinct – held out his arms, and Rowena gently transferred the child to him, smoothing back his hair as soon as he was settled.  “Beautiful, isn’t he?”

Sam and Dean stood over either of Cas’s shoulders and stared down.  The baby was asleep, his head turned in to Cas’s chest and sucking on his thumb.  There was an ache in Dean’s chest that had nothing to do with his picking up smoking again; Sam hardly breathed.  “Everything…everything’s…?”

“Don’t you sound just like a new parent?” Rowena asked, so soft, softer than she’d ever been – and a bit proud, too.  “He’s perfect.  He’s just _perfect_.”

xXx

And perfect he was.

Jack was _perfect._

xXx

It’s the strangest thing when you suddenly see your entire future right in front of you.  Not that Jack wasn’t already their entire future, but this…this definitely changed things.

xXx

Away went the books. 

_The Great Gatsby_ and _Little Women_ and _Huck Finn_ were all shelved.  The books on American history and high school grammar and algebra, too.  Away went the colorful dice the exact size of one chubby toddler-sized hand and the D&D world-building books.  Away went the books.  Away went the little pocket knife Jack had kept in his bedside table.  Away went most evidence that Jack was ever anything _but_ a baby to this point.

xXx

Cas remembered diapers.

“Do we need diapers?” He asked Dean.  “He’s turning two.  Do two-year-olds need diapers?”  Dean vehemently nodded.  He remembered how potty training went with Sam.  Just because a kid figures it out one or two times doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be a few accidents here and there.  “Then I will buy diapers,” Cas said resolutely, then sighed.  “ _Again_.”

xXx

_“You want to…what?”_

_Billie raised an eyebrow.  “Surely you’re familiar with this kind of magic?”_

_“Of course we are, that’s not the point,” Sam spat.  “You think that we should just make this decision for him?  It’s his life, Billie!”_

_Billie just shrugged.  “Look – I don’t write the stories.  What I’m trying to tell you is that even for all your troubles, your little ‘distractions’, it’s not going to work in the long run.  Jack has still been using his powers, and nearly all of my books say that the four of you are going to take on a case concerning a demigod.  Dean will get his head bashed, Michael will get loose, and Jack will use the majority of his soul to defeat him.  And then all Hell will break loose.”_

_Silence.  Sam, Dean, and Cas stood dumbly in front of the cosmic entity, taking this all in._

_“Doesn’t sound good, does it?  And since we all know that there’s only one way this Michael thing goes down without this entire universe getting destroyed, I’d rather this not happen.  Got it?”_

_“Even still, this should be Jack’s decision,” Cas tried to argue.  “I don’t…I don’t even understand why this is the solution!”_

_“The fix you found was temporary, and Jack was trying to go behind your back tonight.  You think a baby’s gonna try that?” She asked smartly, and Cas sighed._

_“What about his soul?  His powers?” Dean asked, finally speaking up.  He was so fucking tired.  He was tired of everything being so goddamned complicated.  “Who’s to say they won’t still be problems?”_

_“Maybe the time it takes for him to grow back up will be enough time for his power to regenerate without him having to use his soul,” she said knowingly.  “Boys, you don’t really have much of a choice in this.  I’m telling you this needs to be done.”_

_A pause, and then Sam said, “I’ll go call Rowena.”_

xXx

Okay, but it really was sort of weird to just suddenly have a baby hanging around the bunker.  At first, they didn’t know what to do with him – the bunker wasn’t exactly baby-proof.  And besides the million boxes of diapers Cas had bought, they were also pretty ill-equipped.

“What the fuck are we s’posed to do with him?” Dean asked as the three of them stared at Jack, who was sitting on the kitchen floor in just a diaper as he tried to feed himself some applesauce, and really only succeeding in getting it all over his face.  

“Uh.  Raise him?  Like we were already doing?” Sam suggested, but even he was bewildered.  Maybe he could see how this kid would someday _look_ like the Jack they knew, but Sam already missed being able to talk to him.  Did babies have personalities?  Was that a thing?  God, day one and Sam was screwed.  He was _screwed!_

“I remember quite a lot from my child-rearing classes and what Kelly and I were preparing for him when we believed he was going to be born an infant.  He needs a crib,” Cas said resolutely with a single nod, and Sam envied his confidence.  The stress made Dean itch for a cigarette.  But Cas had been ready for this from the jump.  All his online classes were finally paying off!

“He probably needs clothes,” Sam said.

Dean rolled his eyes.  “Probably, yeah.”

Jack started banging his empty bowl onto the floor.  He seemed to be having a grand old time with it, too.

“Aren’t there, like, whole stores devoted to babies?” Sam went on.  “Like, does Babies ‘R’ Us still exist?”

“Nah, it went out of business with Toys ‘R’ Us,” Dean shook his head sadly.  “There’s always the Gymboree.”

“We could make clothes,” Cas suggested, and Sam and Dean blinked at him.

Dean sneered.  “Dude.  This isn’t _Little House on the Prairie_.”

xXx

When they called Mary to tell her the news, she hung up the phone as soon as the words _Jack’s sort of a baby now_ left Dean’s mouth, and then showed up to the bunker eight hours later and immediately asked, “Where is he?”

Mary seemed to like the idea of having a baby around that she could play grandmother to.  A real, actual baby.  Jack seemed to like her, too.  So maybe he hadn’t forgotten _every_ thing.

xXx

“Can you say _Sam?_ Sam?”

Jack blinked at him as Sam continued to load their cart with the tiniest (at least, the tiniest he’d ever seen) striped shirts and dungarees and footie pajamas, and little brown boots and itty-bitty socks and little hoodies.  It was cuteness overload.  They hadn’t completely figured out the logistics of all of this, what it meant for their so-called career and how exactly they were going to tell people that the two-year-old that looked like an eighteen-year-old was now an actual toddler, but at the very least, the kid could wear little flannel shirts and jeans like nothing had changed even though everything had.

“Can you say Sam, Jack?” He tried again.  “ _Sam._ ”

Jack blinked again then happily grinned and shook his head.  He really wasn’t much for talking yet, but he did say ‘no’ and ‘please’, but he said it like ‘peas’ and Sam’s heart grew three sizes every time he did. 

xXx

“’Dis you.”

For Jack’s second birthday, they had given him a little chocolate cake just for him, a new box of Crayola crayons and three coloring books.  Sam had also let him use all of the legal pads and printer paper he wanted to just scribble away.  He pushed one of his new art pieces across the table to Cas and repeated himself.  “’Dis you,” jamming his finger onto the paper so Cas would know what he was talking about.  The drawing was a circle with two sticks for (probably) legs and a black line across the top that was maybe supposed to be hair.  Cas got a little choked up.

“Yes it is,” he said.  And then he stuck it on the fridge.

xXx

“Dude, what’s up with you?”

Sam found Dean sitting up on one of the hills behind the bunker smoking a cigarette.  The sun had gone down and Jack had been put to bed.  They’d converted his room into a nursery.  They’d moved the bed out and put in a crib, and when Mary had visited, she insisted on painting it blue and putting up little decorations she’d bought on impulse.  Grand-motherhood really suited her, and the thought sort of made Sam sad, but in a way he could live with.  She’d lost her babies – this was her second chance in her long list of second chances.

“Nothin’,” Dean said, voice suspiciously thick.  He took another drag and then held up a piece of paper.  Sam realized what it was right away and grinned.  He sat down next to his brother.

“Yeah, he did one of me, too,” he told Dean.  “I framed it.”

“Cas put his on the goddamn fridge, smug bastard,” Dean laughed wetly.  He dropped his cigarette in the grass and stubbed it out, then looked at the picture more closely.  Jack’s art style was pretty consistent – humans had circles for heads and two sticks of varying length for legs.  They all figured it was better than anything hanging in any museum.  “Did – when he gave it to you, did he sort of jab the paper and say – “

“’Dis you’?” Sam finished, laughing.  “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed happily, still staring at the paper.  “I hope this is a good thing,” he whispered.  Sam’s brow furrowed.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Dean sighed again.  “Because…because what if Billie’s wrong, and his power never regenerates?  What if he taps into his soul anyway?”  He pursed his lips.  “What if he grows up and gets pissed that we didn’t…that we made this choice for him?”

Sam took a deep breath.  “Dean, I don’t know.  Right now it’d be nice if we just somehow manage to keep him, ya know, alive.  I’d rather have him alive and pissed at us than dead.”

“Amen.”

xXx

“Peas!  Peas, peas!”

Cas shook his head as he put more animal crackers in front of Jack.  “Jack, you can’t live on animal crackers alone.”

“Yes,” Jack argued back.  “Aminal cackers.  Yes.”

xXx

Cas found it hard to argue with that.

xXx

When Jody, Donna, and the girls met Jack as they toured him around, he was met with stares. 

“Hi,” he said, waving his chubby little fingers and grinning.  Jody’s mouth opened and shut.  Her house smelled like baked chicken and corn and fresh bread.  The midsummer evening was warm and Jody had told them over the phone that they planned on eating outside – what good was this sort of weather if you weren’t going to enjoy it?

“Hi,” Patience said back. 

“Boys, can I see you in the kitchen?” Jody asked.

“We know you were sort of expecting a grown man,” Sam conceded.  “But, uh.  Certain circumstances, and all that.”

Jody raised an eyebrow.  “What might those circumstances be?”

“Does it matter?” Dean asked, suddenly defensive, and Sam shot him a look.  Out in the living room, Cas and the girls were sitting on the floor with Jack, the girls seeming to warm up to him after the initial shock.  But Donna had joined them in the kitchen now, too, in the middle of Dean’s tirade.  “Doesn’t he deserve the chance to grow up, be a normal kid?  Does it _need_ an explanation?  Can’t we just be fucking _happy_ with what little time we get?  Jesus fuck, guys.  Can’t you just leave well enough _alone?_ ”  And then he stormed out of the kitchen to go stand in the backyard, hands behind his head.  Sam counted the seconds until he reached into his pocket to grab his cigarettes and light up.

“What was that all about?” Donna asked, and Sam sighed.

“He got some news recently,” Sam said quietly.  “He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

xXx

“So he’s….”

“Your brother.  Sort of,” Cas amended.  “In a way.”

Claire took a deep, steadying breath, the two of them watching from a distance as Jack continued to play with Patience and Alex, showing them his coloring books and stuffed rabbit.  Everyone else was still in the kitchen, but Claire had heard the back door slam so it was a safe bet someone had stormed out, and now she wanted to know what their secret conversation was about.  Probably Jack – Claire had been expecting the grown man from the police sketch and surveillance cameras, the guy who tore open doors to other universes and…and brought Kaia into all of this.  She wasn’t expecting that the first time she met this kid, he’d be…well, a _kid_.  And he was apparently her sort-of brother.

“I just thought I should tell you.  Before he…before, he asked about you.  He was sorry about Kaia.”

Claire didn’t say anything to that.

“I’m sure he’ll like you.  He likes everyone.”

“This is so weird,” Claire whispered, shaking her head.  “He’s…why…?”

“Because maybe, we can give him what none of the rest of us had.”

Claire lets that sink in and then reaches out and squeezes Cas’s hand.

xXx

“Hi, Jack.”

Jack stops what he’s doing and looks up at Claire.  “Hi,” he says back warily.

“I’m Claire.”

Jack points at the floor.  He wants her to sit.  She sits.  He hands her some of his blocks.  “Like ‘dis,” he says, and demonstrates stacking.  “Like ‘dis.”

The four of them stack blocks.

xXx

“When did you pick that up?”

Dean turns around and sighs when he sees Jody coming to sit down next to him.  He probably looks like a smokestack.  “When I was fifteen.”

“Oh.  I thought – well, Donna said up at the cabin she saw you.  Thought it must be the stress.”

Dean scoffed.  “Well, she’s not wrong.  But this ain’t new, Jody.”

“Sam said…”  She took a deep breath.  “He said you got some news?”  Dean just pursed his lips and didn’t say anything.  “Does that news have anything to do with the toddler sitting in my living room?”

He shrugged.  “Maybe a little.  It’s…what’s going on with him, it’s a good thing,” he said, partially trying to convince himself.  “Apparently, something bad was going to happen when he was…how he was before, but now it won’t,” he explained, smiling tightly.  “And now, he gets to be a kid.  He gets to grow up.  He gets to be as close to normal as he’s ever going to get.”

Jody nodded slowly, knowing that was all she was going to get out of him.  He wasn’t going to tell her what his news was.  He wasn’t going to talk anymore about the cigarettes.  He wasn’t going to give her any more details.  She had learned long ago to take what she could get.  “Well, he’s darling,” she said.  “Such a sweet face.”

Dean actually smiled a little.  A real one.  “Yeah, he’s a good one.  You shoulda seen Sam the first time he actually held him.  I don’t think the guy’s ever held a baby before.”  Dean swallowed.  “I don’t think he ever thought he’d get to.  At least, not one that was his.”

Jody blinked quickly a few times.  “Yeah.  Ready for dinner?”

Dean recovered, too.  “ _God_ , yes.”

xXx

“If you ever need a babysitter, just call us!” Claire said, Alex and Patience nodding with enthusiasm.

xXx

When they got back to Lebanon, after Jack was asleep, Sam and Dean and Cas lay on top of the hill behind the bunker, staring at the stars, and finally talked about just what the fuck the next step was.

“So people know now,” Sam said.  “They know Jack’s a baby.”

“Right.”

“Are we retiring?” Dean asked.  He couldn’t fathom retirement tonight.  Sometimes he let himself go off into his fantasy land, fantasize about beaches and Hawaiian shirts and his brother and best friend by his side, someone else taking care of the monsters.  But it was still hard to wrap your head around.

“Maybe it would be for the best,” Cas said.  “Jack can’t take care of himself, and you’re slowly dying.”

Nobody said anything for a beat.  That’s usually what happened when Cas bluntly stated the obvious.

“Maybe we don’t have to all the way,” Sam suggested.  “Maybe we just take a step back.  Like…one of us could hang back and stay with him.”

“Could take less jobs,” Dean said, allowing himself to mull over the idea.  “Not stop completely, but just go out less.”

“Research,” Cas added.  “We could answer phones.  Do for others what Bobby used to do for the two of you.  For…us.”

“Yeah,” Sam sighed, not minding the sound of that too much.  “New hunters are always coming up.  They need…guidance.”

“Makes me feel old,” Dean groused.

“You are,” Sam confirmed.  “Forty isn’t young.  But don’t feel bad – Cas is older.”

Cas felt his lips quirk.  “So what do we think?”

It was a big step, to say the least.  A complete change of pace.  It wasn’t necessarily going to be easier, either, and clearly they were still getting the hang of this because they’d left the kid completely alone and it would take them some time to figure out that you can’t do that with a toddler even if _this_ toddler was once a grown man, but they were going to figure it out.

“There’s Polaris,” Cas mused as they thought.  “Did you know it’s only the fiftieth brightest star in the sky?”

“Then what’s so great about it?” Dean asked. 

“Our axis is pointed towards it,” Sam explained.  “It’s the North Star.”

“Fuck, that’s what it’s really called?”

“It’s Polaris for now,” Cas said.  “It’ll be Vega about twelve-thousand years from now as we continue to tilt on our axis.”

Another beat of silence as they stared up at only the fiftieth brightest star in the sky, but maybe the most important one, besides the Sun.  Everyone’s True North.  Always straining, straining away, providing its guidance, doing its old dance, giving everyone the ol’ razzle-dazzle until it got too tired and had to hand over its duties to Vega for the next twenty-thousand years.  It must be hard work, being a beacon.

“I say we do it,” Dean said resolutely.  “I ain’t got much time left.  I’d like to make the most of it.”

xXx

It sort of becomes a happy story for a while.

xXx

It takes a lot of getting used to.

Life becomes something completely different.  Two of them will go out (if they go out at all), and one of them will stay behind.  Dean gets the most restless and still wants to get behind the wheel, so it’s usually him and Sam still hitting the road and Cas hanging back with Jack, but even that changes with time.  A serious chest infection like the one he got when he was younger sidelines him for longer than he’d like, and he sits around in his Dean Cave moping and marathoning _Jeopardy!_ on Netflix for hours on end before tuning in live at 6:30.  He wants his fucking cigarettes, but Sam hides them from him until he gets better.  It’s bullshit, cuz he’s trying to die here, and this infection is just a sign of bad things to come, and he’d just as soon get that over with so Michael can be taken off the game board.

“What is Kilimanjaro?” He mumbles at the screen, faster than the middle-aged professor.  Small victories, he supposes. 

“Watch Baba?” Jack asks.  Baba is Spongebob, but he can’t quite say it yet.  Dean’s feeling too maudlin for it right now.

“Not now, Jack-Jack,” he says, then coughs into his fist, long and hard.  God, he just wants to die.  He wants to die right now.

xXx

Dean doesn’t think he can do this.

He can’t slowly kill himself and help raise this kid at the same time.

“You don’t get to check out yet,” Sam tells him, absolutely seething.  Dean skipped his meds and wasn’t afraid to tell him about it because frankly, he didn’t give a fuck.  Maybe this was it; maybe this was the cancer misdiagnosed as bronchitis.  “You don’t get to leave us alone yet, and fuck you if you think you can.  _Fuck you_.”

“Get off my fuckin’ back,” he spat back.  “You can’t even fuckin’ _begin_ to understand this.”

Sam hits him.

xXx

Wait.

This was supposed to be a happy story.

xXx

There is a lot of happy.  There’s just not a lot of drama in that, and when you think about the dying part of life, you think about all the happiness you had.  The little things, like in the song from _You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown_.  Finding your skate key, knowing a secret, climbing a tree, sharing a sandwich.  Those little happy things are the best things, the ones you’ll miss the most.

So here’s the happy things.

The first time Jack says the word ‘daddy’, all three men think he’s referring to themselves.  Over time, they realize that the cosmic bond Jack formed with Cas while he was still in the womb means that it’s Cas he’s calling to, but when it’s the middle of the night and he’s crying, he’ll take any of them, gladly. 

Jack hugs anyone and everyone.  He says hi whenever someone enters a room, and goodbye whenever they leave.

Sam always tells Jack to say thank you, but it always comes out ‘tank you.’

Dean tosses him up in the air, which makes him giggle hysterically, and makes Dean forget (sometimes) about his declining health.

When Sam does research, Jack sits with him and colors.  Cas lets him help mix ingredients for spells.  Dean sits him in the Impala when he washes her, and turns on the music and watches Jack bounce up and down through the windows.

He likes being read to.  Charlie starts him off with _The Hobbit_ and Harry Potter at an early age.  Sam read him _The Wizard of Oz_ more than once.  Dean will sometimes resort to reading the Impala’s owners manual when the kid’s at his most ornery.  Mary brings him _Winnie the Pooh, Where the Wild Things Are,_ and books full of old nursery stories that she remembered reading to her own sons.  And Cas reaches back millennia to tell him stories of creation, of the formation of the universe, of chivalrous knights and Mansa Musa and Joan of Arc and how he watched Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel.  What it was like on each of the planets and within the constellations.

Whenever Jody’s girls babysit, Jack hardly ever lets go of Claire’s hand.

As he gets older, Jack starts collecting things.  Rocks, bouncy balls, scraps of wrapping paper.  He arranges them, keeps them in their own separate boxes and guards them with his life.

Sam’s the one who teaches him how to ride a bike.  Dean is the one who teaches him to make a fist.  Cas is the one who teaches him the constellations.

He expresses an interest in playing the piano when he turns five, and Cas dusts off the old keyboard from just a few years ago.

Dean shows him the old Dungeons and Dragons books, the character sheets for Lander Brightwood and Milo Tealeaf, and Jack draws them.

Sam eventually starts reading him the books off his old list – starts in on _Huck Finn_ , but lets Dean take over when it comes time for the Douglas Adams books.

Rowena visits often.  Jack calls her Auntie Rowena, and the old witch’s heart thaws even a bit more each time.  He even calls Mary Grandma sometimes.

He asks about his mother.  Cas tells him how brave she was, how beautiful, how strong.  He tells her how she watches down on him from Heaven, how proud she is of him, how much she loves him, how one day a very long time from now he will get to see her again.

Jack tries to get Dean to stop smoking.  He cries when he realize his efforts aren’t working, that one of his fathers refuses to listen to him, doesn’t get that adults get stuck in their ways and that this particular one is pigheaded and stubborn and will gladly sacrifice himself to save the world time and time again.

Yes – it’s the little things.  When Dean was sitting in oncology listening to the doctor start to explain to him in calm, dull tones that he had stage three lung cancer and what exactly that meant for him, he thought to himself that it was funny that the kid took up a lot of his thoughts.  It wasn’t just Sam, it wasn’t just Cas, but this _new_ snot-nosed kid that had come into his life.

Hey, this had to become a story about cancer at some point.

xXx

But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves again.

There’s one more thing you should probably see first.

xXx

Jack’s nine now.

He’s nine and he never stops talking.

Ever.

Time really does fly, though, and Dean’s feeling that a lot lately.  They really only go out on hunts when someone needs backup, and they usually just train newbies and answer phones nowadays, pretending to be FBI or CDC or looking into the lore for the new guys, like their Bobby had.  Dean’s in his late forties, his hair is completely grey, and he had to get glasses.  Cas looks just about the same, the bastard, if a bit more wrinkled, and Sam’s gone grey at the roots but has never looked happier in his life than he does now.  Meanwhile, Dean’s become leathery from all the cigarette smoke, his breathing has become shorter, and he gets sick more often. 

There’s something inside that tells him that a shift has occurred, that even though he doesn’t know how long it’s going to last, this is the final stretch.

And like he said all those years ago out on the hill, looking up at the stars with his partners in crime as they vowed to do their best to raise this kid, he wants to make the most of it.

“We should go on vacation,” he says to Sam.  “Ya know – get back to nature and ourselves.”

“Yeah?  What’re ya thinkin’?”

Dean smirks.  “How’s Florida sound?”

xXx

“There it is!”

Jack points out the window and Cas follows his gaze.  The Gulf of Mexico stretches out before them.  Dean’s drumming his fingers to the music on Baby’s roof, Sam’s got the directions to their rental in hand, and there’s Hawaiian shirts all around and Jeff Lynne and the rest of the Traveling Wilburys crooning on the speaker. 

“I’ve never been to the ocean,” Jack says, completely awe-struck.

“You’ll like it,” Cas assures him.  “We’re near the Everglades, a couple hours’ drive.  I don’t think I’ve been since they formed.”

“Maybe we could do a day trip,” Sam shrugs.  He nudges Dean.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees.  He’s willing to do just about anything. 

xXx

It’s really everything Dean’s ever wanted.

He’s got his brother.  He’s got his best friend.  He’s got his kid.  The rental house has a saltwater pool that’s always eighty degrees and feels good on his back and joints.  Jack collects shells and puts them in a jar mixed in with sand from the Gulf.  Sam convinces them all to try jetskiing and lets Jack sit with him on his, squealing all the way.  They spot dolphins, and even a manatee once.  The food is the absolute best, especially the seafood, but Dean gets in his fair share of cheeseburgers in.  They fish, Dean showing Jack the ropes, remembering the painful moment in time where it was Jack who was dying and they sat together on those rocks drinking beer and talking.  He hopes this will be a good memory of Dean for Jack once he’s gone like it is for Dean with his own father.  Mostly, though, Dean sits up on the beach while Sam and Jack are in the water, and Cas wanders the shoreline looking for seashells and sand dollars.

He doesn’t want them to hear him coughing.  It’s getting bad, and he knows it.

xXx

“Dude, where the hell did you get this good?”

Dean grins up at the scoreboard, and at what’s probably going to be his last game of bowling.  Maybe.  He doesn’t know yet.  But ending on a perfect score, a three-hundred, felt pretty damn good.  Cas was definitely the worst, even worse, than Jack, and only scored a forty. 

“We’ve all got our talents, Sammy.  ‘Sides, I heard this place had some good mojo.”

xXx

Cas is taking a happily waterlogged, sunburned, and completely wiped-out Jack to bed one night after another long day in the sun, and while Sam and Dean are watching TV, Dean – who’s scared out of his mind to admit this, mind you, but knows he has to – reaches out to his brother, briefly but gently touching his arm.  Sam looks up from his book about shipwrecks – he has no idea what he’s about to get hit with, looking casual and loose from the sunshine and good booze. 

“What’s up?” He asks, not even bothering to mark his place, thinking this conversation won’t take long, that this is nothing.  He’s almost forgotten.  He’s almost forgotten about Michael and the smoking and why Dean’s even doing it again in the first place. 

“When we get back to Kansas,” Dean begins gently, “I think I should get checked out.”

Sam blinks once.  “Oh?”

“Yeah.  Sammy, I think.  I think, I’m, uh.”

Sam cuts him off with a nod.  He gets it now.  “Okay.  Yeah, when we get home.  We’ll get you in.”

Cas comes back out from Jack’s bedroom, a little smile on his face as he thinks about just the sheer _privilege_ of getting to raise that boy, but he senses a pall in the room and he frowns.  Sam and Dean look up at him, and Cas knows immediately.  He can sense it.  Actually, he’s been sensing something in Dean for a while, separate from the slowly dying presence of Michael (which should have tipped him off anyways), something in his health. 

“Dean,” he begins, and he just shakes his head.

“Not now.  When we get back to Kansas.  Let’s not worry about it right now.  _Please_.”

They drop it.

xXx

It’s raining in Kansas.

“I miss the sun,” Jack says.

xXx

His fathers did, too.

xXx

“Alright,” Doctor Preston begins as he puts scans of Dean’s lungs up on the wall, turning on the light behind them so they can see just how bad they are.  “Between the cigarettes and your work with cremation, it’s about what we thought.”  Sam sinks down into a chair and just stares at the X-rays of Dean’s lungs, sees the tumors.  “I’m sorry to tell you that you have stage three lung cancer, Mr. Winchester.”

Dean is hardly fazed.  “What – what do I do now?”

Doctor Preston sighs.  “With treatment, I’d say you have about a thirty-six percent chance of reaching the five-year survival rate.  That’s with treatment.”

Dean shrugs.  “Could be worse.”  Sam shoots him a dirty look and Dean shrinks back on the table in remorse.  He takes a deep breath.  “Well – tell me what’s next and I’ll do it.”

xXx

The car ride back from the hospital is silent.  Sam still lets Dean drive, doesn’t want him to feel like an invalid just yet. 

xXx

“We have to tell him,” Sam whispers.  Him, Dean, Cas, sitting at the kitchen table.  Jack is playing his keyboard.  Sam doesn’t even need to whisper, but he feels he has to.

“Don’t tell him the odds,” Dean insists.  “I don’t – I can’t tell him.  That…that – “

“Okay,” Sam agrees.  “But we have to tell him.”

xXx

When they do, Jack’s heart sinks into his stomach.  He gives his fathers a funny smile and just shakes his head.  “You have what?”

Dean doesn’t need to repeat himself.  Jack heard.  He’s nine years old, and the first thing he thinks when he hears the news is that Dean is going to die, and he’s going to have to watch it happen.

xXx

Jack remembers death.  And he remembers Death.

He’s nine now, and he has vague memories. 

He keeps that to himself.  He needs to focus on Dean.  Needs to focus on him getting better.

(They never tell Jack that Dean won’t be getting better.)

xXx

They have to tell everybody else.  Mom sobs into the phone.  Donna never stops apologizing.  Jody says,

“So that was your news, huh?”

xXx

“I already hate this,” Dean says weakly after his first round of chemo, Sam sitting in a chair by his hospital bed reading a book.  Some NYT bestseller he’s barely absorbing.  “Why’m I even bothering with this?”

“You want as much time as you can get, right?” Sam asks gently.  “With us, with Jack?  We’re not scared of this, Dean.  We want you here for as long as you can be.  We’re not afraid to see you sick.”

That last part was a lie.

xXx

The oxygen tank really makes Dean feel like an invalid.  He doesn’t need it all the time yet, but mostly he does what he can to make sure no one sees him use it so he can wallow as loudly about dying as he needs to.

xXx

But when he bites into the first real meal he’s had in what feels like ages – simple spaghetti and meatballs that his mother somehow managed to make – and he can’t taste it?  Oh, he weeps right at the kitchen table.

xXx

“That’s Orion.  The hunter.  Like you and Sam.”

Dean grins.  He and Jack are sitting up on the hill behind the bunker, the most sacred of spots.  He’s showing him all the constellations that Cas has taught him.  “Not much of a hunter anymore,” Dean quietly laments.  He’s really not – if the hunts were slow while Jack was growing up, they’re nonexistent now.  Dean’s carrying around the oxygen tank pretty much everywhere he goes now, which is really just around town and the bunker, and he can’t breathe well, and even if he still has all his hair he’s lost most of his senses.  Absolutely worthless in the field.

“Dad says that you’re always going to be a hunter.  It’s just who you are.”

Jack has gotten used to Dean being sick.  He’s ten now, almost eleven, and Dean has been sick a long time.  He hates it, but he’s used to it.  But he doesn’t tell Dean he hates it.  He wants him to think he’s strong.

“Guess so,” Dean whispers, then coughs for a minute.  Jack pats his back a couple times, the way Sam did.

“Dad says my Mom’s up there,” Jack goes on.

“I believe it,” Dean says.

“Wouldn’t be so bad to be a star,” Jack muses.  “Don’t you think?”

Dean just laughs, wheezy and breathless, nothing like the way he used to, the way Jack remembers.  Jack can hear the laugh Dean laughed when he would toss him up in the air when he was little, or when Cas accidentally said something really funny that he didn’t realize was funny.  Just another change.  “You’re a funny kid, Jack-Jack.”

Jack grins.  “You’ve called me that a long time.”

“Since you were little,” Dean confirmed. 

“But not before.  When I was big.”

Dean stops.  Jack had never brought up Before.  Nobody thought he really remembered Before.  “You remember that?”

“A little.”

“Ah.”  Dean nods once.  Then he eyes his kid, and as Jack stares up at the sky, Dean is overcome with the purest, simplest love.  And the hardest hurt.  He’s going to miss this one.  He’s going to miss them all, but he’s going to miss this weird little kid.  “So – how’s it been, the second time around?”

Jack grins, thinks about new crayons for his birthday and learning how to ride a bike and helping to wash Baby.  He thinks about Lander Brightwood and Milo Tealeaf.  He thinks about Huck Finn and the tales of the Knights of the Round Table.  He thinks about cancer, too, about how he hopes Dean gets better but that he’s starting to think that maybe he won’t.  But what’s important is that Dean is here right now, beside him, very much alive, and that Sam is inside on the phone with a hunter walking him through a rugaru hunt, also very much alive, and that Cas promised to read the next chapter of _Gone with the Wind_ to him tonight, and that he’s still here, too.  Right now, all of his fathers are here, they’re _here_ , and there’s one beside him right now who he knows loves him even if he thinks he’s a bit of a goofball.

Jack realizes that there has never been a moment in his life – at least, the second time around – that he hasn’t been loved.  He is _surrounded_ by it.

“It’s been really good,” he says.  He looks at Dean.  “I love you,” he says simply, then turns back to the sky. 

Dean purses his lips, sniffs back tears, and stares up at Polaris.  True North.  But he’s never really needed the sky to help him find his way home.  It’s always just been right here, and will be for a little while longer yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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